MAY 2001 BROADSHEET - E-Commerce and Getting the Most out of the Internet
We had a good turn out, well balanced speakers and very lively discussion at our April meeting on the Thursday 26th. Even though we stage a meeting on the Internet nearly every year, it never fails to stimulate great interest - this year was no exception.
Howard Elsey, Group Sales and Marketing Manager of the Transact Group gave us a broad view, first of the history of the internet and then how this organically growing system is affecting business organisation. The hierarchical pyramid with its endless reporting between layers was replaced by the intranet and the flat pyramid in the 80’s, followed by the co-ordination of function through work groups in the 90’s and now, in the zero’s, the virtual intercompany task forces. The web site has automated the Sales and marketing processes and when fully integrated to back office systems the whole raw material supplier to finished product sales chain will be automated. The quality of experience on web sites will be crucial and planning the site will be tantamount to planning the business.
Jonathan Milner, our second speaker, was there to prove that it worked. He had built up his antibody supply company, ABCAM, to a £1M turnover in two years by using their own novel CRM software. A culture of customer reviews means that information about hundreds of products builds up automatically making the database grow into a comprehensive information bank. Other companies’ products also get included so that Abcam can trade in these too by rebranding them. The program to do all this was devised by Abcam and implemented by Analysys and Jonathan, David Cleevely and Mark Long were the main inspiration behind the completely automated system. Without having to lift a finger Jonathan is recruiting 200 new users a day; and no advertising – all done by judicious keywords for search engines to spot and appropriate banner presence.
Needless to say, the discussion that followed took some curbing. A technical hitch could not be contemplated, the whole business depended on the website working perfectly which meant parallel servers and instant switch-over if necessary. If you are sufficiently roused to find out more, Howard Elsey can be found on howard.elsey@netbanx.com and Jonathan Milner on jm@abcam.com.
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